This is the case study of how I applied the strategy of “far transfer” early in my YouTube career, broke through and reached new highs.

Learning environments

YouTube is a wicked learning environment. Wicked learning environments is exactly as the name says, its a “wicked” environment.

These environments lack clear feedback, are ambiguous and have constantly changing rules. They are also characterized by high difficulty in learning from past experiences and to predict outcomes accurately.

Let’s use golf as an example to explain in very simple terms.

Gold feedback loop: After you have swung, you quickly get feedback about whether your hit was good or bad. It’s quite easy to judge; golf has clear feedback

Rule changes in golf: The rules of golf seldom change and performance comes down to continual skill development and practice. It’s not ambiguous and it has clear non-changing rules

Golf is a “kind learning environment”; cause and effect is often easy to track. Chess is also an example of a kind learning environment.

Now, I said that YouTube is a wicked learning environment. Why is that?

YouTube feedback loop: When you upload videos on YouTube, you can often get an indication of whether your video performed on not based on demand in the form of views. However, sometimes it can take months before the views is drawn in (as you see on the graph taken from my channel). Feedback is delayed.

In addition, there are far more variables at play such as seasonality, trends, video packaging, etc. All these variables make it far more difficult to pin-point exactly what are the contributing factors to success and failure. It’s because YouTube lacks clear feedback rules.

Rule changes on YouTube: The rules of YouTube are continually changing. What the “YouTube algorithm” favors are under continual change if one look on the history of YouTube. These constantly changing rules creates even more uncertainty for YouTubers. Cause and effect is difficult to track.

So how does one overcome the hurdles and uncertainties of wicked-learning environments?

There are techniques known to work in wicked-learning environments such as far transfer. Far transfer is a technique where you transfer knowledge, skills or mental models from another context into a significantly different one.

Look at this example:

“The performance of videos on YouTube are partly decided by supply and demand”.

Here we are using another field of knowledge, to explain how a mechanic on YouTube works. Economics (supply and demand) served as a mental model in the attempt to explain a small part of YouTube.

Another example:

“YouTube automation, like trading, utilizes short-term trends to capitalize. Traditional YouTubers, however, invest for the long-term to build a stable audience”.

Here too I used far transfer to explain how YouTube might work using a mental model from finance. Now, that was just a few ways to look at and explain YouTube. Consider the magnitude of all the different variables on YouTube that needs debunking using far transfer to grasp the full picture!

The “YouTube algorithm” are a set of many different variables that can be explained quite easily independently, but when added and multiplied together make the “YouTube algorithm” very complex. Such is often the case with wicked-learning environments.

How I far-transferred the principles from “Blue Ocean Strategy” to create a banger video on YouTube.

In 2020, I had started gaining some traction on the channel “Lore of the Rings”. The market for Lord of the Rings videos was emerging, and the timing was ripe. However, I lacked something to truly set me apart over the long-term.

Most of my videos were basically just clipping together movie clips and narrating analysis. They were not much more complex than powerpoint presentation, although the editing was quite ok.

However, my only differentiation point at that time was the topics. Not sufficient for the long-term I reckoned, if I were to create a competitive advantage!

Pondering upon how to differentiate myself, I randomly watched a channel called BazBattles. The channel made videos about battles and wars from the table-top point of view.

I realized that this format had not been done in my market. I looked everywhere, and all I could find were one video that had performed really well, and it was an outlier.

I realized I could try to replicate such a project in the Lord of the Rings market. As such, I made my first table-top video about one of the famous battles from the movies, “The Siege of Minas Tirith”. I had no idea how to pull it off, but you learn surprisingly fast when you are curious and passion-driven. I had to reinvent lots of ways of how I produced my videos!

However, it worked really well. One year later, the video had almost 800.000 views. I had applied principles from “Blue Ocean Strategy” to understand how I could gain a competitive advantage on YouTube. That’s the power of far transfer when executed correctly!

Blue ocean strategy emphasizes that blue oceans are seas where demand must be created, and there’s potential for high growth. Competition is irrelevant in the blue ocean because the rules are to be set. Blue oceans can be created by changing the traditional industry rules.

The traditional rules was depicting Lord of the Rings videos with still images or movie clips. Nobody was using a table-top format to depict Lord of the Rings. It was remarkable and unique!

The lesson:

• Blue Ocean Strategy is a viable mental model which can be applied on YouTube

• Far transfer is effective in the wicked environment of YouTube

The whole point is that you can use different mental models to explain, understand and attack different mechanisms of the wicked environment.

Also, you can use the far transfer of blue ocean in several ways, it doesn’t need to be for changing your format explicitly.

If you want to find good formats to take inspiration from, use Viral Dashboard!

Access Viral Dashboard now